


Sasha and the Boys.

by dragonfly756



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Sasha James, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23524642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonfly756/pseuds/dragonfly756
Summary: The archivist Sasha AU we've all been waiting for! After a sudden promotion to head archivist of the Magnus Institute, Sasha hires her three best bros as assistants, but after she finds some threatening tapes from the old archivist she finds herself entangled in a mystery that she doesn't know if she wants to solve. Highlights include a very brief amount of not!Jon, a world where everyone manages despite their terrible jobs, and maybe, just maybe, a happy ending.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 65
Kudos: 122





	1. The hidden tape mystery.

The day Sasha James is promoted to head archivist of the Magnus institute: London, is far more somber then she would have liked. She had been promoted, not entirely because of her own merits, or because the old archivist had retired, but because she had died. Or, as Elias put it when she asked, "Died in the line of duty." Gertrude had been on the older side, from what she could remember, so it was possible she had simply passed away, but something about the way he said it unsettled her.

Still, a promotion meant choice, choice of organizational systems (From what she could tell there wasn't one.) and choice of research assistants. and who was better then her boys?

Tim is the one she approaches first, a great deal more tentatively then one would approach an old friend, she wondered somewhere in the back of her mind if he might say no. She needn't have worried. He rewards her with the grin that rapidly _un_ -classifies documents and a fistbump, "Put er' there, new boss." and she does. After that it's easier, Martin accepts, albeit more reluctantly, and when she asks Jon his expression slips into what she privately thinks of as his shocked pikachu face before he, too, stammers out a "Yes."

That should have been the end of it, really, it would have suited Sasha just fine after the nightmare of artifact storage to work a quiet desk job with three of her best friends. And for a while it did, the statements were unsettling, sure, and okay, maybe it was a bit creepy that some of them just wouldn't record on anything other then the ancient tape recorders that kept showing up on her desk, but it was fine, everything was fine. Until they found the tapes.

  
Sasha sits at her desk, trying desperately to be calm. of course, the box of statements that she just organized crashing to the floor when Tim throws the door open doesn't really help. he pushes his hair back ruefully with one hand, and Jon scowls from one of the folding chairs arranged in a half-assed semi-circle around Sasha's desk. "I just organized those this morning, Tim." Tim "Mmms" agreeably from the floor, "That'll be why they're organized under 'S' for spiders then." he says, wiggling his fingers over the pile of fallen papers, just to see Jon cringe, which he does, adding a grimace for theatrical effect. (Tim swears up and down that Jon was a theater kid in college, pulling up grainy YouTube videos of some steampunk band and pointing excitedly at the lead singer. Nobody else really believes him.) "Point taken, er, why did you call us all here again?" he turns to Sasha at this last bit, his face seeming suddenly younger as it fills with uncertainty. She fiddles absently with one of her braids, "I don't really know, I thought maybe we could all listen together." She presses play just as Martin enters the room, wordlessly placing a mug of tea in Jon's hand. it's a voice, that of Gertrude, presumably, she speaks urgently about danger and keeping the archives disorganized on purpose, (Jon gasps indignantly at that, almost knocking down one of the boxes precariously perched by his elbow.) she concludes with a warning, and the tape clicks off. there is silence for a moment, and it's Sasha herself who breaks it.

"So, thoughts?" Martin raises a hand timidly. "Shouldn't we really ask Elias about it?" she answers without thinking. "No, I think we need to figure this out ourselves somehow." she doesn't mention the floorboard she found the tapes wedged under, the way the magnetic film brushed her hand like something living and the dark of the hole beneath, far too dark to be just a hands-length deep. "Maybe she was lying and it really was a prank." Tim offers, though he doesn't look as though he really believes himself. "I know I'd say it wasn't one, if I wanted to really be believed." Sasha shakes her head decisively. "It's too well done, I trust all of you, anyway, to not pull anything even for hazing, besides, these were hidden, under floorboards." There's another silence, floorboards changed things. her hand finds its way to the sides of her nose, pinching as though she can activate her x-ray vision to see to the bottom of things. "I don't know, I think this means something, just be careful, right? maybe do some follow-up on some of the older statements, you boys up for a reconnaissance mission?" this last part is directed to Jon and Martin, who looks up with a start, he blushes furiously, his eyes full of betrayal. Jon, for his part, looks ready to protest this arrangement vindicatively, with words. Sasha doesn't wait for their response. "The worm lady might be a good place to start, Prentiss, I think her name was? check up on those hospital records, Tim, you stay here with me and look for any related statements." He shoots her some finger-guns and that's that, she tries to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.

Sasha hopes she's making the right decision.


	2. World's greatest(?) detectives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There are brief mentions of bedbugs, worms, and/or fleas in this chapter.

There are worse places to sit in uncomfortable silence, but Martin can't really think of any right now. The floor of Jon's car is littered with no less than five different sweater-vests, all of them covered in what he thinks is cat hair, and several roadmaps that have been (Unsuccessfully) folded and stuffed back in their bloated folders. It's not sticky or gross like the inside of his old car, but he's acutely aware of where he puts his feet so ask not to trample anything important. It's sort of charming, really, that Jon, who always takes great pains to be tidy and pressed in thrift store blazers and slacks, just didn't care much when it came to his own vehicle. it reminded Martin of a book he had once read, that someone could care a great deal when it came to their own appearance and work, but not about-

-He's yanked out of his reverie as they swerve narrowly around a corner, an abrupt change from the leisurely ten miles under the speed limit they had been going before. "damn, almost missed the turn." Jon says, more to the road than anyone else, he gestures distractedly towards Martin. "Hand me that map?" he frowns, amends the statement. "Please?" Martin's suddenly sweaty palms emerge from the floor with all fifteen of the roadmaps. "Yeah, um, which one-" The car swerves again, almost hitting the pale streak of white and grey that darts across the road, they come to a screeching halt on the shoulder and Jon throws the car door open before he can say anything else. And then he's crouching, on the side of the road, in clothes not really made for either of those things, hand outstretched. Martin can't really hear what he's saying but it sounds gentle. The shape emerges from behind a trash bin, wary at first, but approaching, Martin hears something that's suspiciously like a meow before Jon scoops it up, practiced and easy in his jacket.

  
So now Martin has a cat in his lap and a comically large roadmap in his face. which was decidedly not how he thought today was going to go, but oh well. Jon mutters something about rerouting and pencils and whatever happened to just having maps of areas in local gas stations anyway? what did they expect would happen if their new-fangled GPS broke, Martin? that was exactly right, they would have to get a map, like a _sensible_ person, he was just cutting out the middle-man, really, and whatever happened to places that sold tea, decent tea, not that iced monstrosity with too much sweetener? Martin is only half-listening, the cat, for their part, rubs their face against his and purrs like a lawnmower. Martin hopes they don't have fleas, he remembers the hellish month that was fumigating, or worse, _not_ fumigating for bedbugs at his mother's house, he couldn't climb in a bed after that without thorough inspection beforehand, he always felt as if they might crawl under his skin in the night, their tiny bodies squirming, nesting, _feeding_. He shudders at the thought of doing all that again. The cat purrs louder. Jon pulls in to the parking lot of Fielding Memorial Hospital, he seems to have gone off on a tangent that Martin couldn't really follow, something about the Dewey Decimal system and file indexing, even if he doesn't entirely understand, something about the steady patter of his voice comforts Martin. 

  
The engine cuts and they are sitting under the cement overhang in front of large, glass sliding doors. Jon clears his throat awkwardly. "Shall we?" Martin swallows, nods, he feels suddenly grim, he's been inside too many hospitals. Jon has his hand poised over the door, looking for all the world as though it will bite him if he tries to open it. "Should we, both go in? or, should I? I haven't really done this before." Oh, of course he hadn't, field research was usually Martin and Tim, or, more regularly, just Martin, Jon, for all his virtues, had never really had to go somewhere and _ask_. Martin decides then. "I can go, someone has to stay with the little one anyway." At this, the little one looks up and chirps. "Are you sure? I mean, if it were Tim, he just does the Tim face and people hand him things-" He demonstrates the Tim face by baring his teeth and raising an eyebrow, he succeeds in looking only slightly pained, but not much else. "- But Martin, you can't just-" he waves his hands to indicate what Martin 'Can't just.' "- _Nice_ them into giving you classified medical documents." That isn't exactly true, Martin can nice his way into a lot of things, certainly medical records. (They were a lot easier to get at than most people would imagine, anyway.) He smiles in a way that he hopes is reassuring, "Jon, it's fine, just- stay here and watch the cat for me, okay?" Jon looks slightly embarrassed, but relieved. "Okay, I'll, stay here." He holds out his hands and Martin feels matted fur and calloused fingers brush his and then he is out, in front of the doors again. He goes inside.

  
The next hour is a blur of waiting room, bad coffee that he drinks just to have something to do with himself, antiseptic, asking, asking, _asking_. He has the papers. He smiles, says thank you, because that is what he does, and then he leaves again.

  
He's sure he's breathing, but he doesn't remember how.

  
The car, the papers, Jon, this is what matters, it has to matter. Martin steps numbly, foot against pavement towards the car, towards what matters. "-Martin's the only one who makes _decent_ tea anyway, he says it's the fact that it's from this tea sommelier he knows in Chiswick, but he's made the grocery store kind from the breakroom and it tastes just the same, do you reckon he poisons it or something?- Oh." Martin pulls himself into the car, closes the door softly. "I have the records." his voice sounds wrong, hollow. "I, see that. Are you all right?" Martin is not fine, he is the furthest thing from fine that he's been in a while, but he smiles and nods. "I found the files on Jane Prentiss, they said she came in unconscious, and full of worms." Jon tries his best not to visibly recoil at that, and fails miserably. "and after that?" Martin shakes his head once, "She- left? I guess? Nobody found her body after that, but the thought of living with those _things_ inside your skin-" he cuts himself off with a shudder. 

  
"I should have gone in with you." says Jon suddenly. Martin shakes his head again. "I'm fine, Jon, really." (He is very clearly not fine, but neither of them says anything else about it.) "I don't like spiders, or large doors, my grandmother died in one of these places." These things aren't even vaguely related, but they mean something. He thrusts the cat towards Martin. "Hold Captain, it'll help." Captain purrs, digging small claws into the fabric of his jacket. "I'll call Sasha, tell her what we found, then we're getting you ice cream, tea, _something_." 

  
They don't talk much on their drive back to the institute, Jon blasts something loud and senseless and so utterly un-Jon-like that Martin laughs, Jon would normally look annoyed but he just feels relieved. They don't get ice cream, but they stop by an animal shelter to check Captain for a microchip, and, finding none, pick up the food and various other accouterments that ownership of a cat entails. The silence between them is no longer uncomfortable, and both of them had almost forgotten about why they had taken this trip in the first place when the phone buzzes. 

  
Tim had found something on one of the tapes.


	3. There's a cat loose in the archives! (and also an inhuman monster who could potentially kill at any moment but it's fine.)

"Statement of Adelard Dekker, regarding.... A table?" There's a different voice, deeper, "A table bound to something else, something inhuman." The other person, Gertrude, clears her throat. "A table you bound to it, presumably." a pause, possibly a nod of respect between two professionals acknowledging each other's work. "Indeed, it contains an entity known as-" static crackles through the tape deck speakers, cutting off the name of the thing. "-and if released, could kill again, you would never even know if someone had been replaced." another pause, perhaps as Gertrude considers this information? "I see, and leaving it here with us is-" the tape cuts off again, though not with static this time, but a wail, piercing and mechanical, growing louder every moment as the tape deck shudders, this goes on for several minutes, growing loud enough that Captain meows in annoyance before it shuts off of its own accord. 

  
Tim looks entirely unconcerned with this chain of affairs, but Sasha places a protective hand over the small, overheated thing on her desk. "it did that the first time too, only the insides fried and the whole thing shorted out," she shakes her head, "these things are like those old Nokia phones, you could drown them, light them on fire, they'd still keep ticking, and this thing-" she holds up the offending tape as if it's singularly repulsive. "-this thing bricked it." she sighs, tries to inject some of the normal-Sasha warmth into her voice. Her words sound like that of a stranger anyway. "So, we investigate." Captain chirps at this, lifting her head up from where it lay on Jon's lap. "So we- what, go look for this table that, I may say, we don't even know what it looks like, and also has something bound to it that wants to kill us and or replace us, whatever that means, and to just be fine with that?" Martin shoots back, diffident as always but with a slight edge of something else, of accusation. 

  
And of course she doesn't, Sasha doesn't want any of them near anything actually dangerous, but there's a new feeling pricking behind her eyelids, and the air smells of something clean and fresh, like mint toothpaste. She needs to know. Not in the normal way she wants to know how to pronounce the absurdly long (but real) town names Tim texts her, not the casual interest of knowing how a book ends, but a _hunger_. The hunger for knowledge of what the table contains is as woven into her now as breathing. 

  
"When you put it like that, it sounds like we're being sent to our deaths." Jon remarks dryly, Though his facade of professional coolness is broken when Captain stands up and rubs her tiny face against his, once, twice. "Maybe we should _table_ this discussion for now." Predictably, Tim looks way too pleased, predictably, Sasha and Martin both groan, _Un_ predictably, Jon snorts. Tim socks him playfully on the arm and somehow looks even more pleased than before. "Seriously though guys, do we really want to mess with this thing? at least let's find out more about it instead of rushing in, guns blazing and thinking caps tossed into.. Mount Doom or something? let's at least have a plan" Sasha nods, the spell from before broken. "Yeah, I don't suppose charging in there with an axe is really going to help matters." Martin looks up from where he's sunk into one of the chairs, the metal groans as he fixes her with a singularly scandalized expression. "An axe? where would we even get an axe?" Jon looks up from petting behind Captain's ears. "There's an Ace hardware that just set up in Soho, actually, cheapest one there's seventeen dollars, it's not that difficult if you know where to look." 

  
Tim puts on a face of mock horror. "And why would you know that, Mr. Axe Murderer?" "Actually, Mr. Murderer's my father, you can just call me Axe." Captain meows as if to say "So there." Sasha feels her face twist into a mischievous grin. "Didn't you used to work there?" she asks, knowing full well that he had. "Ah, -why, why would you ask?" Jon says, casually, _his voice not strained at all._ Martin has the good grace to look awake at this startling development. "Wait, what?" Sasha grins, wider now. "Yeah, in college, I mean, you never struck me as the carpenter type, which means-" if he looked embarrassed before, Jon looks positively mortified now. "Yes, yes, alright, I did it for the pun, you happy?" Sasha is, actually. _very._

  
Tim, all thoughts of the table and whatever was in it forgotten, looks like a child opening the Xbox his mom said he definitely wasn't getting this year. "Are you serious? the closest Ace hardware before this one was- I don't think there's one in this CITY, where did you find it?" Jon mumbles something that's thoroughly muffled by Captain's fur that he's stuck his face in. "There wasn't one in the state, there isn't even one in the country! He got a job answering the phones for one in Maryland, wherever that is." There wasn't much to do in the archives once statements and research were accounted for, so Sasha often found herself spending time picking up...Trivia, about her fellow employees, it very rarely paid off, but when it did, it _did_. Martin laughs incredulously, "But, that means you'd have to do it over the computer, the interview, the job, everything, wasn't it terribly difficult?" Jon unburies his face from the cat with a wounded expression, "I do actually know how to use a computer, you know, working with the Minerva database _was_ part of our training." 

  
Tim has gone silent, and he almost throws the mug of tea in his hand as he points accusingly. "Sasha! you've found all this 'trivia'-" he bunny-ears violently with on hand, "-and you won't believe me about _the band?_ after everything we've been through? The epic highs and lows of our _obvious_ romantic tension?" Sasha laughs at that, they had had a brief, but fun, fling, she had explained politely what aromanticism was, both as a general concept and how it pertained to her, and he had backed off like the gentleman he was. It was just something they joked about as the self-proclaimed action movie duo of the archives. "The Band is a bunch of grainy footage of some guy running around singing about war and folklore, and yelling, a lot, does that sound like Jon to you?" Tim nods vehemently, "Yeah, it does, because it's him, just listen to him and you'll get what I mean." 

  
Sasha had, in fact, listened, she listened at length after cleaning up the frankly garbage audio that she could find, the singer had a British accent, the singer had long, dark hair and a jacket that could only be described as extravagant, he dived around the stage, cackled and snarled and wept and crooned. Jon wore his hair in a tidy bun or braid, on the rare occasion it was down it looked like an advertisement for some new and innovative deep-conditioner, he wore sweater-vests, and would jump about five feet in the air if you walked up behind him as he organized files, his voice was even, restrained, and the only hobbies he admitted to partaking in were reading and, presumably, organizing his sock drawer in order from most beige to least argyle. She would keep looking, of course, because the fact that there was not one video out there with remotely clear footage and/or audio seemed to her like a challenge, and she was not about to be out-stubborned by the YouTube algorithm, but she highly doubted they were even related, that somehow Tim had gotten the details wrong or was pulling her leg, probably that last one, knowing Tim.

  
"I'll believe it when I see it, anyway, tables aside, what'd we find on Prentiss?" Jon, who had been very politely been trying to smother himself in Captain's fur for this whole exchange, perks up. "Martin actually found something pretty- Interesting, she was full of worms?" He nods encouragingly in the vague direction of Martin. "Uh, yeah, she was found unconscious in her apartment building, the attic, I think? her skin was covered in holes and the holes were full of worms and the worms crawled out of her and killed three people, and then, she just, disappeared." He hands over the papers awkwardly, not exactly a ted talk, but it would have to do under the (Very Disturbing) circumstances. Sasha nods in the way his old therapist used to. "So, we have a worm lady on the loose, an evil table, and a broken tape recorder." Tim grins. "Now all they need to do is walk into a bar." and all they needed to do was connect all of them, somehow. "Guess it's time for the red string and corkboards then, what say you?" Captain mews decisively. "Aye aye, Captain-" She says with a mock-salute, "-First mate!" Tim throws back automatically, earning a subtle glare from Jon. "Let's get to work!" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe me if I said the wait for this next chapter was at least partially due to the fact that I spent a while frantically googling if there was an Ace Hardware in London? and then again googling how much an axe cost?


	4. Copy that.

If Tim and Sasha were the action movie duo, Jon and Tim were the professional bastards, Jon, because he was both professional and a bastard, and Tim, because he was a professional at being a bastard. This got them into a lot more trouble then either of them (but mostly Jon.) would have liked. Today, Sasha had found a table, a table that contained a thing that could kill and replace people, a table that she had sent both of them specifically to investigate, armed with two axes each. (Tim had made a crack about them swinging both ways that he hadn't thought was that funny really, But Jon and Sasha both clicked the 'Add to cart' on the twenty-dollar axes, (hey, if you were going to potentially come face-to-face with something that could murder and/or replace you entirely, you might as well splurge.) and that had been that.) As it was, they had no less than four lines of communication out, two police officers waiting outside, (Martin had insisted.) and two strings tied to their ankles. "In case they have to yank us out like a worm on a string." Tim's voice was light as he said it, but his hand trembled slightly as he tied the red bungee cord, some overcomplicated knot that he probably learned in the boy scouts. "May the Captain give us new life as cat toys then," Jon replied. Captain, for her part, had batted away the string Jon was tying around his ankle, meowed insistently even once her food bowl was full, and as a last resort, bit down gently on his thumb. None of it seemed to work, Jonathan Sims was not a brave man, but he was a stubborn one, and he had set his mind to finding out what was in that table. 

  
The table, for all the fuss it had caused, just sat there, no evil aura, no spooky music, nothing. It was quite insensitive to the situation. It had a hole in the middle like a donut, that was kind of interesting. Tim poked it experimentally with the handle of his axe. "So, is it supposed to eat us or something?" Jon kneeled down, ran his hands over the polished wooden surface of it. "The only scary thing about it right now is that any mug you put on it is going right on the floor again." Jon still didn't reply, he seemed in awe of this utterly boring thing, which wasn't entirely unusual for him, but it was just a table. it sat there, like a table, with legs and a surface and a slight glow that could just be his imagination, Jon tapped the table absentmindedly, beginning to hum a little tune, not like any Tim had ever heard, it was slightly unnerving, and Tim was just about to wonder if Jon was pulling his very first prank when the already dim lights started to flicker in time to the beat.

  
Tim tapped him on the shoulder, no response. Tim tugged the rope attached to his foot, no response. Tim cleared his throat very pointedly and then pulled the rope again, harder this time, no. response.

  
The lights flickered a staccato to match his heart, Jon's voice was no longer a hum, it was a chant, Tim tried to lift him, to move him at all and run, run, Jon's thin form seemed unmovable, instead of hanging, catlike and limp like he normally did when Tim picked him up, he stayed still, stayed silent, like he was rooted to the spot, Tim fought every instinct in his body to leave him, to bolt for the door because maybe there was still time, if not for Jon then for him at least, maybe, please, this thing was going to carve out the insides of him and take everything that he was and no one would know, they would love the thing that wasn't him and they would never even know that he was gone, was dead, just like- 

  
Jon started hovering, a soft and gentle thing, cross-legged, and only an inch off the ground, Tim could feel his eyes boring into the very depths of him and finding him _wanting_.

Tim ran.

  
"Statement of Jonathan Sims, archival assistant at the Magnus institute, London, regarding an encounter with a being captured by Adelard Dekker. Statement recorded direct from subject on June 23, 2016, statement begins."

  
"Well, Sasha, there's not much to tell, I went in to artifact storage with Tim, like you asked, and the lights started flickering, I bent down to examine the table more closely, -it's in the nature of scholars such as ourselves to investigate, don't you agree? -and I started to feel this strange compulsion, like my insides were being pulled, the littlest bits of viscera twisting, making my vocal cords contract, undulate, in and out, in and out. The table started to glow, I don't remember much after that. I guess Tim went to get help, but I don't remember, and then I woke up here, must have bumped my head on the concrete or something."

  
Jon smiles widely, friendly, Sasha feels suddenly sick, though she doesn't know why. "I see, thanks anyway for the statement, standard procedure and all that." she tries to return his smile, Jon is often smiling, either the friendly way that he does when he waves good morning, or the soft, absent smile he has when Martin brings him coffee, his resting face even looks pleased with itself, it's the thing she likes most about him. She shuts the tape recorder off with a resounding click and turns to him. "Listen, if whatever happened down there was scary, you can tell me, you know, I'm not asking as your boss at this point, I'm asking as your friend." He shakes his head firmly. "I won't have you worrying your pretty little head about it, I just went down there, I got scared, yes, but I came back, and I'm ready to file." She will, in fact, worry her pretty little head about it, she had sent her people, her friends, into the line of danger knowingly, just because Elias had convinced her that she was needed elsewhere, actually, his exact words were "Need you alive." which was a bit creepy, but that was Elias. Now here was Jon, gentle, affectionate Jon who dressed like a old-timey professor and filed well into the hours after closing time, and he was trying to deny the fact that he would probably have some form of trauma from this. Sasha couldn't stand it, couldn't stand feeling responsible for all of it, even with all their back-up and contingency plans and police involvement, and at the same time, she was scared for her friend who was always so good at bottling up any kind of emotion and letting it age like fine wine.

  
She lets him file, it keeps him distracted.

  
The Captain meows once, twice, tries to claw her way through the door into the artifact storage room until her paws have left deep scratches on the door, raw, gaping wounds. Jon picks her up with a look of fond exasperation, she squirms and scratches until she's put down again, and Jon lets her leave. He always wanted to be a good cat dad for her, even if she hated him since the day he found her on the side of the road.

  
If Tim and Sasha were the action movie duo, and Tim and Jon were the professional bastards, Martin and Jon were the blondies, the nice boys, the ones with a cheery nod for everyone, where Martin's was timid, Jon's was firm. Everyone in the archives said they were meant to be together, given the amount of time they spent together. But Jon was never Martin's type anyway, it would have been absolute hell to work with him if he was, so Martin was always very grateful for that. They make each other warm drinks, they joke casually with Tim, and quietly avoid each other whenever they're left in the break room alone. For all their individual warmth, they don't actually like each other that much.

  
_In the table, something struggles, a man, a person, a moth caught in a web, no-one sees, no one hears, he cries out not with words but the singular howl of something being slowly digested. the table isn't too happy about the arrangement either, it wasn't anywhere near full strength and here was this little scrap of a human, being pulled by it's estranged cousins of seeing and knowing and crawling wretched things, clinging to life by his ragged little finger-ends like he will die if he lets go._

  
_well, there are worse things to happen to you then die. anything that's been around as long as it has knows the difference._

  
_this thing wanted to hollow him out, this small fleshling with clothes too shabby and a core like steel, it wanted to rend and tear and mold him and something was stopping it, he was stopping it, yes, with this love thing, this stubbornness thing, that all the flesh-things kept alive for. He was holding on by threads, by half-measures, he was being tugged by forces beyond his comprehension, the table-thing's and something else. this made the table-thing angry, or as close to it as it was possible for it to be. one thing was for certain, though, whatever handfuls of emotion and caring he held on to, whatever other things wanted him,_

  
_they wouldn't protect him for much longer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evil donut table steals and replaces four Jons a year is untrue, Stranger donut table who lives in the artifact storage room of the Magnus institute, London, and eats ten Jons a second is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted.


	5. Surprise Party(?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may be slower on updates for a while, I've gotten pretty busy recently, I haven't forgotten about you! Hope you have fun with this one, guys. :D

All things considered, the cold tile of the archive's breakroom was not a good place to have... whatever flavor of breakdown timothy stoker was currently having. Very unergonomic, and the better part of both his legs were going numb through the thin fabric of his trousers. he was a coward. he was a coward, and because of that Jon very nearly died, but the worst part was that a part of him didn't really care. he had just wanted to escape, to live, and that had overided any part of him that knew better. his hands shook. And Danny? Danny was still dead. he and Jon both would have been if he stayed, he knew, he knew that. Yet he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he had lived and- well, it didn't bear thinking about. It would be the worst kind of death, being unmade. He dreamed of it sometimes, him in the center of that stage, that thing pulling itself towards him, his skin gone, a mass of colors and lights where there had once been a person. It hurt, it always did, but not a pain he could ever describe. It was the unbearable pain of being nothing at all, you never again laugh at a stupid joke one of your friends had made, would never whirl around a darkened room in the arms of someone you loved and were loved by, would never eat burned popcorn straight from the microwave, would never cry again, would never be held, would never sing terribly just for the joy of making noise, of being alive at all. You would be nothing, forever, and no one would ever know.

He doesn't stand at the soft open-shut of the breakroom door, Elias had insisted on the kind with a plastic window in them, replacing the old oak doors with ones that wouldn't look out of place in a diner, it was meant to make the space more open-concept, very Property Brothers of him, Tim was sure, but it just made him feel watched. He hears a soft, hesitant shuffle of worn shoes and he lets out a shaky breath. Just Martin, Martin, who..... has a lighter? He hums absently as he rounds the kitchen island almost tripping over Tim, "What- what are you doing down there?" Tim pastes on a half-hearted smirk, "Moping, nothing terribly exciting, you've got a lighter." Martin looks down, as if realizing it's in his hand for the first time, "Oh, so I have, Jon gave it to me, says he wants to quit smoking." he stuffs it in his pocket hurriedly, "Listen, I think Sasha wanted you to -Follow up a statement! Carlos Vittery's place, it's very important that we know more about the bug people or... something." Tim nods, not really registering. "Hey, do you want some tea?" Martin's using the Voice on him, the one he uses when someone's not telling him something. Tim doesn't want tea, he wants to crawl into the archive's dishwasher, on the highest setting, with Dawn's dish soap so the ancient thing would pool suds all over the floor like the one time Elias tried to use it. Martin hasn't waited for a response, he grabs the red iron kettle that you could probably give someone a concussion with if you threw it hard enough, and makes his slow, shufflely way to the stove. Tim hears the click-click-click of the gas and-

"-No, wait, don't use that burner!" "Why not?" Martin turns it off hastily. "Sasha decided to grill one of her tape recorders for information," there's an intense smell of burning plastic, as if to punctuate his reply."Literally." Tim runs a hand through his hair distractedly, although it's probably beyond hope at this point, there was a fine line between romantically tousled Poe Dameron hair, and just being a mess, and if Martin was asking if he was okay it was probably the second one. "Oh." Says Martin, as if this is a perfectly normal sentence. He turns on the second-best burner. "Nothing breaks those things except for that tape, I think Sasha wants to test that theory, so, she went all Johnny Storm on it this morning, nothing happened, but it smelled horrible." he laughs suddenly, "What if we made that into an oil for one of those vape pens-" he does a sweeping gesture with his arm."-'burning tape recorder, opens the sinuses AND all of your many, many eyes.' We could give it to Jon for Christmas, just to have an alternative to the cigarettes." He breathes in deeply while holding an imaginary pen, "Ah, carcinogens." Martin sputters, trying very hard to look mad, "He doesn't sound anything like that!" Tim grins, putting on an even more ridiculously exaggerated voice, somewhere between Christian Bale's Batman and Bill Nye. "Nonsense, this is what I've always sounded like, Mar-tin, you're the only one who knows how to make a decent cup of coffee, nobody else thinks to put in half the sugar container, not even me with genuis-y genuis-ness." Martin shakes his head with a look of fond exasperation. "At least you're feeling a bit better then, -you want the _good_ thermos, right?" he hands Tim the good thermos without waiting for a response, the metal feels solidly real then anything else around him. Martin pours the hot water with a practiced ease and the steam curls slowly out, bergamot and honey. "Now, about that statement?"

The tape recorder clicks off, another statement, another dead end. The Captain is good company, even when the dim light of the archives is pulsing against her temples. Sasha pushes back from her desk with a sigh, she's ready to admit it, she feels terrible. And the worst part was, she had eaten, she had slept, hell, she'd even _meditated_. All she was left with was the nagging sense that Something Was Wrong And She Doesn't Know What. It doesn't feel right sending Tim out again so soon, but for the plan to work he would need to be gone for a little while, and Vittery's house is safe, she's checked, obsessively. Well, at least as safe as a house with weird ghost spiders can be. There were too many threads, the tape recorders that kept showing up on her desk, her coat pocket, her purse, that wouldn't melt in the slightest or smash or-

-it was too much to think about right now, she had other, better things to worry about, like where Martin was with that cake. Technically a karaoke machine didn't fall under business expenses, but it was a special occasion and that meant everyone was going to have fun. especially Tim, he had been very out of sorts after the whole table thing, to put it lightly, and she needed to do something, cheer him up, if only for a minute. Elias had refused to see it that way, spoilsport, so she had settled for downloading an app that worked off Spotify or YouTube playlists, and she had attacked both websites with the grim determination showcased only by those planning a heist or a birthday party. a determination that had paid off, she had successfully compiled a playlist that ran the gamut between frankly trash pop-punk from the early 2000's, the Irish Rovers, and the Crazy Frog Song. (a terrifying new genre in and of itself, hadn't she read a statement about a band that killed people with terrible music? they were probably the ones that had written that particular earworm, or, earfrog?) bands with music that killed you aside, it was a very good playlist. Elias was going to hate it. Jon had even managed to find some USB microphones from eBay, as far as Sasha could tell, they were in suprisingly good condition, unlike Jon's singing voice. Unfortunately for her eardrums and contiuned sanity, he had taken to tuning the radio to whatever pop station the feeble antanea could pick up in the basement, he would sound almost ererily like whatever bubblegum-voiced pop star was on at the time, before going suddenly screechy. Captain would always look up from her perch on the tallest shelf and meow plaintively, Jon always said she was singing along, but Sasha thought privately it sounded more like the cries of agony she herself was violently repressing.

She had just about resigned herself to a day of no work when she heard the gentle 'ping' of her phone. It was an email from that YouTuber she had gotten a statement from a while back, Melanie King, she was a prickly sort, no doubt used to doubt due to her line of work. A female YouTuber ghosthunter? If any of those were bad on their own for receiving the appropriate credit for your work, well, Melanie had all of them and had succeeded anyway. Melanie had given Sasha a piece of her mind for her use of tape recorders ("Really? at least Audacity doesn't have a built-in expiration date.") and Sasha had given her one of the cookies Martin had brought in to work for valentine's day, both of them took a bite at the exact same time, and she saw Melanie's face screw up in disgust just as she felt hers begin to do the same. As it turned out, Martin had put in lemon juice instead of lemon zest, about three tablespoons of it. After they both chugged out of the same mug of tea ("Seriously, he's this good at making tea and that bad at making cookies?") they basically had to be friends. The subject line of the email just read, "Send Tim this Jon-strousity, lol." Well, with a subject line like that, how could she resist clicking on the link immediately?

She landed on a red website with mock-typewritten text and a few videos, off to the left were 'tour dates.' But those were basically just all the bars with an open mic night and low standards, under that were two of the most terribly designed t-shirts she had seen in quite a while. (Merch, presumably.) and there it was, the thing she had been searching for for months now, (Well, other then the answers to all the questions the mysterious tapes, table and tape recorders left.) A non-grainy video of The Band. Suprising, given the whole graphic-design-is-my-passion look the website had going for it, still, better not to look a gift horse in the mouth. She pressed play with bated breath.

The man in the video held his microphone with practiced disdain, pushed back his long hair. He was undeniably Jon, that was the odd thing, he bowed theatrically, with a wink at the camera, as if to tell her how much she owed Timothy Stoker at least ten quid and a major apology. And then he began to sing, not in Jon's voice, not as she had ever heard it, but commanding, smooth in a way that his speaking voice wasn't, and certainly not his singing voice. It was like hearing a stranger's voice from the mouth of her friend.

oh, because he _wasn't._ Her friend, that is.

The gears whirred and clicked in her mind, the table, the strange lack of fear or trauma, it was all because he wasn't _Jon_ at all. He was someone, some _thing_ else, as she watched the video blipped in and out, suddenly degraded, as if there were two Jons on screen, one with dark, wavy hair, and one blonde. The one with the dark hair she didn't recognize, but that was him, probably, unless she was seeing body-snatching horror-terrors where there were none. She calmly texted the link to Tim, and calmly scooped up the Captain, took one of the axes, and barricaded herself in the Archives bathroom with a tape from Jon's birthday party and a very confused Martin Blackwood. Everything seemed to be going fine, or at least as fine as it could given the fact that she was now barricaded in the Archive's bathroom with only a door, a few folding chairs and an axe between her and (kind of?) certain death.

Then the door creaked, her head whipped around frantically, but it wasn't the bathroom door at all.


	6. The door opens

He was decidedly not a person, that's the first thing Sasha notices. The door he leans out of is on the ceiling, the bright yellow of the chipped paint hurts to look at, a chlorine ache behind her eyes, but that's nothing compared to when she looks at him. His fingers are long, pointed, made for tearing things, and the halls behind him stretch and twist forever, He is angles and light and nausea, a six-foot-two blonde migraine of a man, and he's _smiling_. 

  
"Hello, Archivist." His lips don't sync up with his words. (it takes every bit of strength she has not to scream.) Martin pulls her backwards from where they're seated on the floor, holding the axe in front of him like a talisman that could ward off this creature, this thing. He is shaking and yet, he places himself as a shield in front of her. She pastes on her warmest, most reassuring smile, and does something very, very, stupid. 

  
"I'm Sasha, actually, who are you?" _Because she remembers. This is how it works, you swallow the terrible pit of dread in your stomach, you make eye contact with the other little girls and you smile and introduce yourself, this is how friends are made, normal kids are not afraid, and she wants to be normal, wants to be friends, wants to be safe, most of all._ Only now, of course, the 'friend' to be made is standing in the ceiling, and she probably has every reason to be afraid of him. He laughs, and all the sinks shatter and all the mirrors gush water. "I am not a 'who,' Archivist, but a 'what', you may call me Micheal, for that is what I once was, or 'The Distortion,' 'The Spiral,' for that is what I am now, but I am not a person, or even a thing, not in any way that matters."

  
Sasha's face doesn't betray her as she processes, and when she speaks, her voice is even, clear, even as it shakes. "I see, Micheal, why are you here?" Micheal is standing on the floor now, he was in the ceiling, and now he's not. Captain meows in indignation at this flagrant disregard for the basic rules of physics. "Hmm. it's not a matter of why I'm here, it's not very entertaining, is it? having you all cozy in here where it's safe, that is what I choose to tell you, by the way, you're not very good at asking yet, and I wouldn't push your luck." He waves with one long-fingered hand towards the door, the proper door, "I could just leave you out there, with your friend, see what happens."

  
Martin speaks for the first time since Micheal...arrived? jumped out of the ceiling? "We die, is what happens, not very good entertainment if you ask me." His voice shakes, with fear, and something else, anger, Sasha realizes, true and full anger for the first time that she's heard it from him. Micheal pouts, and then he is chin-in-hands, cross-legged on the tile across from them, a twisted parody of a conspiring child at a sleepover, and when he speaks, his voice is low, mocking. "Then Martin, whatever am I supposed to do with you?" Sasha feels her breath catch in her throat. Martin had better know what he was doing. "The real Jon, something took him, something that's not you." Sasha nods, catching on. "It's not your friend either, is it?" Micheal drops his grin, frowning for the first time since they've met him. "And what do you propose?" Martin brandishes his axe by way of response, "That thing, Adelard said it was linked to the table, right? destroy the table and-" he mimics an explosion with his free hand. 

  
Micheal grins then, wide and sharp. "That sounds like a splendid idea, we'll just grab one more friend to help us." Before Sasha or Martin can protest, he's back in the ceiling and the door slams and static-flickers out of existence. "No! Wait!" 

  
Too late they sink back to the floor, Sasha on her heels, Martin on his knees. The water and ceramic are strewn around them in a semicircle, the grout and dirt of the floor swirling to the top in a film, a soup comprised of horrible ingredients. And if Micheal was getting the thing that used to be- -was pretending to be? Jon, then they were very likely the garnish. 

  
Well, that was that, then, Martin rises to his feet, Captain still clinging to his shoulder. He's pale, but his face is set, grim. Sasha keeps her feelings close to her chest, lets slip only that which is kind, easygoing, but it makes her want to cry, that face. He looks brave, and she is so very, very afraid. He offers her his hand to help her up, hand warm and firm, and when she does, she realizes her skirt is coated in grime and broken things, and there's an incongruous tear along the hem of it. it's her favorite skirt, and now it's ruined.

  
She feels tears along her cheek, and she feels Martin's arms around her, brief, steadying. He's shaking too. They allow each other this moment, and then it is back to being Sasha and Martin. And because they are sensible things, they move the chairs blocking the door swiftly and quietly, assembly-line style, to a stack that looks too neat to be in this ruin. "Right, my office then, more axes there." but there it is again, the too-yellow door and the grinning man and- 

  
-Tim, Micheal is holding Tim by the collar, like a mother cat carrying a kitten by the scruff of their neck. Micheal hoists him higher to avoid his ineffectual punches. "Sasha! Martin! There really is a worm lady and I don't know where she went but she was chasing me, this creep dragged me through a Windows XP screensaver- I think he wants to hurt Jon!" He's cut short when Micheal tosses him from the door (in the wall this time, thankfully.) onto the musty carpet of the Archive's hallway. "Tim!" At the sound of his name, Tim groans and musters a weary grin. "That's my name, don't wear it out."

As it turns out, they don't have time to wear it out, something is rounding the corner, singing the latest pop tune. The shape of him is flesh and edges, twisting, barreling towards them with too-long limbs and vicious intent. "Archivist!" His voice is wrong, Captain wails, all the rest scream, Micheal opens the door underneath them and they are all falling into color and madness and then-

  
-Darkness. They are on a floor of some kind, wooden, yet giving underneath their sprawled bodies, Sasha's glasses have somehow miraculously not fallen off her face, and she can see in the darkness a tiny red dot, hear the whir of unspooling plastic tape. She fumbles until her hands close around the familiar grey plastic of her tape recorder, the recording light should not be enough to see by, but her eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and she manages to find Tim and Martin, their bodies haphazardly flung over each other in an impressive display of ragdoll physics. Otherwise, they appear to be conscious and, thankfully, unhurt. "C'mon then, we have to get out of here." Though 'here' isn't really a place, it is a place, but it is wide, and small, and cramped all at once, the ceiling is too low, and the floor is spongy, it might be breathing, but it's hard to tell. In the dark, she can feel first Tim's hand grab hers, and then Martin's. Without much conversation, she slips her tape recorder into her skirt pocket and pulls herself towards them.

  
"How- how do we leave?" it's a voice, Tim's voice, but thick and laced with effort, as if he's trying to talk through maple syrup. "I- I don't know, we need to find a door." Sasha knows, and yet the knowing is harder in here, Martin pushes himself up off the floor and it groans. His hand sinks in like the wood is so much putty, and Sasha can see it's glowing, his handprint glows a dull, pulsing red, illuminating the strings dangling from his shoulder where Captain held on, there is a low moan of pain from below them, the floor is alive. From his place on the floor, Tim laughs weakly, "Worst birthday _ever_."

  
_The table-thing was livid, these things of flesh and bone, they were where they had no right to be. The moth-thing, the other one, it had been wrapped up snug and almost docile and now it had resumed thrashing about, calling from below many layers of confusion and strings for the rest of them, wanting, fighting, however weakly. and now it felt the ripping, tearing raggedness from above, from inside, and oh how it hurt-_

  
"Jon!" Sasha feels her fingernails tear through the softness of the floor, she can hear him, see him so close. It was Martin who realized first, began the frantic digging through the clay-like wood of the floor, but all of them can hear now, the wordless cries for help and the terrible moaning of the wood around them. The light pulsing from the floor is scarlet now, and they can see the frantic sweating faces of each other, hoping, clawing, desperate, because they can hear him-

  
-A breath, a breath, oxygen feels like fire after so long in the nothing, and there are faces? Faces he knows, maybe, and arms under his arms and legs under his body, limp and unsupportive things after so long beneath and-

  
_-it will not let them go, not after so long digesting, scheming, it feels the throbbing pain of everything red behind its surfaces, and here it is, the neon yellow wood, the liar, the thief, the deception that was not its own, and it was trying to take them out? it had another thing coming if it thought it would be easy-_

  
-They see it then, the rectangular outline straining against the redness, and it is neon, and glowing and they scramble towards it and they are falling once more, to freedom, or something worse, it hardly matters, they tumble out onto the ground, no longer softened and wrong and red, but musty archives carpet. Captain leaps from the too-long hands of the one who took the Jon-who-was-not-her-Jon and meows frantically, they are all of them alive, all of them panting, even though their hair and clothes are coated in the muck, they are together and they are breathing and that is enough. Micheal laughs that in that terrible sink-shattering way, and the last Sasha hears before the static whir of his door disappearing is "Cute cat, by the way." and then, he's gone.

  
They all lie there for a while, just breathing, just grateful to be alive at all.  
  



	7. Spreadsheets and Sing-alongs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter one this time around, but this is my emotional support karaoke party and you are all invited.

"Okay, how are you not worse at this? it's got to be a little bit fake." Sasha shrugged, wiping the mock-sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. "Nah, this is real, this is me, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be now-" Tim swats her playfully, "So you've watched a lot of Camp Rock then, I can excuse it, but leave some talent for the rest of us!" She relinquishes the microphone dramatically, taking her seat in the semi-circle of rusted folding chairs. Captain bounds over, leaping onto her unoccupied shoulders. Tim takes his place in the center, "Alrighty then, Mister Blackwood, you'd better hold on to your tea, because I'm about to spill it, Mister Sims, you'd better hold on to your socks, because they're about to get knocked off, and Captain, You'd best be ready to come out of the bag, because-" He flourishes with his free hand. "-You're about to have a pretty good time."

The opening synth notes of Rick Astley's most popular song drift through the speakers daisy-chained around Sasha's office. It hadn't been very hard to convince everyone to have Tim's "Birthday Party" a few weeks late, it had been slightly harder to get Elias behind the idea, but frankly, she hardly cared anymore what Elias thought. She had submitted a complaint through the usual channels about the safety risk of a man who could appear through doors that didn't exist, as well as the thing that wasn't Jon. She would have submitted one for the table as well, but if her time in artifact storage had taught her anything, it was that these complaints were "Taken under advisement." Which really just meant that Elias would smile his politician's smile, shake her hand, and never, ever speak of the matter again.

So she had done what any sensible person would do, and she cracked the encryption around his outgoing internet traffic. (It had been a great deal easier then she had expected, seriously, the man still used Wired equivalency privacy, aka the top of the line in wireless traffic encryption..... When wireless was first invented. She had cracked it in a matter of minutes with a website that predicted the numbers used to encode his data.) What she had found was less than promising. or, technically what she had found was a google doc titled 'The Watcher's Crown' that contained a chart divided into fourteen sections. one column was labeled 'Archivist' and one was labeled 'Marks.' He had filled in the first column with the name "The Spiral(?)" which was how Micheal had referred to himself, if she remembered correctly, whatever a mark was, it probably wasn't good. The little comment bubble next to this entry was no help either, it just said "Instigate more, just because it hasn't yet doesn't mean it won't, patience." Anything to do with instigating Micheal was probably a bad idea anyway, and the thought that she had avoided something bad was cold comfort when Elias's patience was involved. Gertrude had said something about fourteen, fourteen powers, and that was certainly something to think of-

-There's a knock at the door, "Heard you were having a party?" The face of Melanie King, ghosthunter extraordinaire peeks out from behind two comically large gift baskets, she drops one near Jon, who startles, then looks down at the floor, embarrassed. "That's for you, you know," She drapes the other one over Tim's outstretched arm, "Not right, you getting trapped in a table." Tim pauses mid-song to fistbump her and put the basket down. "So you got me a gift basket?" She nods. "Yeah, I know we didn't exactly get off on the right foot-"

"-by which you mean I told you your work was oversensationalized rubbish, I'm so sorry about that-" She raises a hand. "Sash trusts you, and that's good enough for me, plus, I saw a lady take off her skin, that sucks, I imagine getting trapped in a table also sucks, so," she jazz-hands in the general direction of the giftbasket. "Giftbasket." Jon pulls out the novelty mug that says 'I'm an archival assistant at The Magnus Institute: London. What's your superpower?' and Tim pulls out a nameplate that says 'Timmy Magma' in obnoxious bold font. "Also your band is really good, I kind of want your autograph now."

Martin almost spits out his tea. "Wait, _band?_ "

"Good lord."

Tim looks like it really is his birthday. "Yeah! do the voice!" He thrusts the microphone at Jon, who looks somehow even more tired than before. "Unless you wouldn't like to." Tim backpedals, but Jon grabs the bedazzled hunk of plastic with sudden vigor, and in a moment, there he is, he almost slouches, but he looks at least a foot taller. "This is the sorriest excuse for a party I've seen in years, and whoever chose the music, you should fire them, out of a cannon, preferably." He sneers, but throws an exaggerated wink at the end for Sasha. Melanie's eyes practically anime sparkle. "Georgie said it was good, your videos really don't do you justice."

 _No, they really didn't_.

Okay, Sasha was not going to think about that right now, this was a party, for forgetting all the scary things and having a bit of fun, and that was precisely what she was going to do or so help her- "Do you have any remotely bearable shanties this side of linear space-time?" This directed at Sasha. "I have '500 Miles', is that good?" He nods, grin wider then she's ever seen it, like the perpetual state of sleep deprivation he seems to have been in recently has fallen away. "I will need a fair bit of audience participation for this one." Martin looks like he's about to bolt, or faint, maybe both depending on how it goes. "I'm not much of a singer-" Tim claps him reassuringly on the shoulder. "We'll all help, then!" Melanie nods enthusiastically, yup, definitely anime sparkle. Sasha feels herself grin then, screw Elias, screw the doors, and the things that wanted to kill her. She was here with her friends, and they were alive, and indeed, they were about to have a pretty good time.

Captain meows triumphantly and, when everyone is distracted, sticks her face in the chocolate cake sitting on Sasha's desk. Melanie pulls out some cupcakes she brought for the humans to eat instead. and all, for once, is well.


	8. Our girl Jane.

Mondays were fine, a mountain of paperwork was fine, the fact that his centuries-long plan to complete his very delicate ritual was derailed because of a cat, and his apparent inability to keep up with modern-day encryption standards was _not_ fine. It would be ruthlessly dealt with until it was fine again, but it would be an annoyance until it was remedied. Suffice it to say, Elias Bouchard was having a very hard day, a very hard week, a very hard sequence of hours and minutes that were strung together in vaguely sequential order following the standard rules. 

But it was fine. Or it would be. The best-laid plans of mice and avatars of the ceaseless watcher often go awry, or whatever the saying was. The thing- that-was-not-Jon was currently trapped in the twisting hallways of the-thing-that-was-not-Micheal, all because the original Micheal Shelley had been a huge cat person. Well, it was in the nature of archival assistants to meddle in affairs beyond their pay grade, and Elias knew of a huge worm person who maybe, just maybe, would get his plan back on track. 

***

Tim hadn't come into work, not that he had come in late, (although even that was unlike him, for all his quirks, Tim showed up to work at nine AM sharp, all pressed slacks and chipper voice. His coworkers were slightly less chipper, as they had the usual reactions to mornings, which was to say, Martin almost poured a kettle full of boiling water on his own hand once.) But he hadn't shown up at all. Sasha had tried to think of any reason he just wouldn't show up, they had all had a glass of wine apiece at the end of their belated birthday party last night, but nothing that would keep anyone from coming into work the next day. 

it was, quite frankly, incredibly worrying. And if it weren't for the fact that she was actually in quite a bit of pain, she probably would have been even more worried. As it was, it was a struggle to get through filing, the floor appeared to warp and shift slightly, like a fuzzy television set, and her temples throbbed, the dim light of her desk lamp was the worst part, it wasn't even that bright, and even so, she felt the intensity of it as if it were the light of a thousand suns. 

There was a knock at the door. It was Elias. 

"May I come in?" It wasn't a question. 

Sasha opens the door, slowly, and before he can close it, she props it open with a nearby box, somehow, it makes her feel safer if there's the possibility that someone else could see her, see him. He takes her seat at the desk without invitation, folds his hands on top. a steeple. a spire. He motions for her to sit at the end of her own desk in one of the still-streamer-covered folding chairs. She sits, all too aware of how he looms, and he looks for all the world as if he's savoring the mouthfuls of her discomfort.

"Sasha," he says. "We need to talk about the invasion of privacy your recent actions present, not just to me, but to our organization at large." She nods, the breath catching in her throat. and at the back of her mind is the question, yet another to add to her list. "I was just doing some routine server maintenance and happened to stumble across your files, it won't happen again." it's his turn to nod now. "I see, make sure it doesn't happen again. I will know." he doesn't elaborate as to how he'll know, exactly, but the look on his face tells her it's not an empty threat. "Other then that unpleasantness, I should congratulate you on the work you've achieved so far, the archive has never been more well organized, I'm not one to speak ill of the dead, but your predecessor, for all her charms, was never the most tidy individual." 

Gertrude had, from what Sasha knew of her, arguably few charms to speak of. According to the all-important tape, however, the organization of the archive had been nothing if not deliberate. the purpose of which was not yet certain, but it had at least given Sasha pause. “I’m sure I’ll pass on the news of our good work to the rest of my team, is there anything else you wish to discuss?” 

“Yes, I rather think there is.” he points to the tape recorder on her desk, it’s running. Funny, really, the things you miss when you’re not looking for them. “You have been remembering to record statements, haven’t you, Sasha?” She doesn’t care for how he says her name then, as if she’s just a number on one of his spreadsheets, a variable that isn’t behaving as he expected. She hasn’t recorded a statement in a while, between the thing with the table and the damnable spreadsheet, she thought it best to sort through what files she had on hand, stopping occasionally to scribble something down or catch hurried mouthfuls of toast. She feels too nauseous lately to stomach much else. He hands her a neat stack of papers in a manilla folder. “It may take your mind off things.” he gives a tidy little salute and leaves. 

It’s 12:00. Sasha’s phone buzzes, Tim is out sick with a stomach bug, at least, that’s what she thinks he means by all the worm emojis. Odd for him not to call, but maybe he was recovering a bit after… well, after everything. He and Jon were close, and maybe the thing-that-wasn’t-Jon had brought back memories of Danny, she doesn’t feel well enough to think too much about it, just a relief that he’s okay. Even so, she can’t set aside the nagging feeling of wrongness, the pit in her own stomach, maybe she’s coming down with something too, or maybe she’s just looking into it too much.

Sasha reads the statement, something about calliope music, Jon comes in halfway through to pet the Captain and bicker with her about the correct pronunciation of calliope, the fact of which neither of them really care about, it’s more the ritual of the thing, things both of them are a bit uncomfortable expressing outright. _Are you well enough to be a bit grumpy with me about something trivial? Let’s be a little normal for each other, annoying, even. I hope Elias wasn’t too terrible, I see you._ He wanders off to the kettle, muttering something about steeping times and tannins, he has a solid ceramic mug in hand that seems utterly sensible and plain except for a line drawing of a cartoon cat on the side, he fills it with boiling water (the man had a thermometer to check that it was precisely right and everything.) and a teaspoon of honey, and leaves it on Martin’s desk without a word. Afterward, Sasha’s headache clears, and she has an appetite for the first time in days, she goes to the breakroom and has the best packet of crisps she’s ever tasted. all the while, there is that shape, a flash of red, a squirming thing, lurking outside Tim's apartment.


	9. Worm Bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry for being away so long, things have been busy over the past year for reasons you can probably imagine. (None of us had 2020 vision. none of us.) unfortunately, updates will probably be erratic at BEST from now on, I don't plan on abandoning this story, but I apologize in advance for dropping off the face of ao3, it probably will happen. Anyway, enough rambling! Lovely reader, I present to you......the chapter!

The main problem with worms is that they’re small, Tim had frantically shoved a chair, a thoroughly dead potted plant, and about half a dozen empty store bags in front of and underneath the crack in his door, and still he wakes up to the wet schlorping of yet another tiny intruder on his poor hardwood floors. 

His landlord was going to be very unhappy about this. But all things considered, his landlord probably wasn’t in a position to care about the state of his hardwood if he also didn’t care about the four-foot-one lady in a red dress with worms wriggling out of her every pore and also stalking him. The fact that said bug lady had also stolen his phone and was presumably doing something sinister with it, judging by the way she hunched over it and peck-typed occasionally was something he would try to worry about later, after she was gone, after there weren’t worms that were trying to eat him swarming through his apartment when he really just wanted to sleep and not be on the verge of a panic attack for what- maybe five minutes? It wasn’t much to ask for, but that had been his life for the past day and a half. Well, in between crushing worms with various heavy objects and pouring cereal straight from the box and down his throat with the fervor of a dying man, not that he knows any dying men that eat cereal like that, and it would be pretty hard to pour straight from the box, considering-

He shakes his head like an etch-n-sketch to clear it, the fact of the matter was that he was trapped, and that no-one was coming to save him, and he was so angry because he was going to die helpless surrounded by the mushy corpses of the very worms that would eat him, and-

-there’s a knock at his window, and then a mighty crash as it shatters, from the floor he can see a hand silhouetted against the cold moonlight, and for a moment he fears it’s Prentiss, that she’s finally found a way to break in and that this is truly the end. But the hand is a deep, warm brown with a tiny nick where it’s been grazed on the glass, which means- 

“Sasha!” his voice is high with relief.

“SHHH!” he sees her face then, her normally soft expression is set, determined, she looks so much like a hero then, and her glasses are doing the anime shine thing they like to make fun of but it looks really cool. He clambers out the window, the broken glass ripping the hem of his pajamas, he’s been wearing them for a few days, he realizes, and he’s drenched in sweat. The mesh of the fire escape metal bites cold lines into his bare feet. 

“Jon’s in the car, we have a plan.” of course, Sasha, with her manilla folders of family member’s birthdays and itemized lists of groceries, of course she would have a plan. “As soon as we had all connected the dots about the Vittery place, it was just a matter of finding a place big enough, and the explosives.” she says ‘explosives’ like she says the word ‘coffee mug’ or ‘tax benefits. She worries at the cuff of her cardigan, narrowly avoiding tripping on the last step. “Of course, that’s if we can lead her there.” she hasn’t been looking at him for several minutes. “Which means?'' As they approach the car, Tim can see Jon in the passenger’s seat, Martin in the driver’s, looking just about as nervous as he feels, and a lumpy….blanket? In the back seat. “Which means we need bait.” she answers. The blanket squirms and hisses, a strangled version of the latest pop-tune. “Well, looks like I’m sitting next to the….bait, then?” she nods, “very firmly trussed, don’t worry.'' The thing in the blanket makes a sound like a rubber chicken being put through a hydraulic press, a sound that is, presumably, laughter. “And how would you know that, little archivist?” 

“Yeah, not to agree with Koh the face-stealer here, but how do you know, Sash?” 

“Oh, I  _ know. _ ”

Okay, that makes about as much sense as anything else. Tim gets in the car. The thing in the blanket squirms nastily, like a- well, like a worm. Sasha squeezes in next to him, the wool of her cardigan sticking to his skin, Sasha has always run cold, shivering in air conditioning and wearing light sweaters even in the dead of summer, but now her hands are like ice against his own. 

“Martin, are we ready?” he gives a single thumbs-up in response. “Good,” out the still-open car door Sasha yells, “Oi, Prentiss!” and slams the door shut. “Drive!” 

The thing with Martin was, out of all the archive assistants, he was simultaneously the worst and best driver. This feat was accomplished by a strange combination of stopping short whenever there was a pedestrian and also breaking the speed limit half the time, no one had died before or in his car, and yet he had a peculiar aggression with which he took turns, and entered intersections, and switched lanes. All of which was to say, when choosing a getaway driver from among the employees he was Sasha's first thought. The car moved at a fast clip down the tarmac, staying in the bright glow of street lamps on abandoned side streets, the-thing-that-once-was-Jane glowering out of alleys, sliming along sidewalks after them, always just a bit too slow.

But the luck couldn’t last forever, they hit Oxford street, a bright oasis of flashing lights and crawling traffic, a concrete jungle of pedestrians and cars and little dogs that didn’t look both ways before crossing the street, it was a MarioKart track devised by the devil, and Martin Blackwood? Well, he was Waluigi.

He swerves around one car, and gets stuck in a traffic jam.

And continues to be stuck in a traffic jam.

And continues to be-

“Do you want to hear something funny?” Says the thing-that-is-not-Jon.

“Does it involve you shutting up?” Martin replies.

“I was going to take the everything of your friend, I was going to flail his soul from his eye-sockets, the blood from his heart, it was going to be such a glory of pain…..”

It leans conspiratorially towards Tim, who instinctively leans away, squishing Sasha into the door.

“And you want to know the best part?”

“Ow.” Sasha replies.

“You all liked me  _ better _ than him.”

It laughs again, high and loud. Tim kicks it, and it only laughs louder.

“Tim, please, it’s all right, I don’t mind.” 

“Well, the rest of us,  _ just so happen to- _ ”

_ -Crash _

_ There’s the sound of something heavy landing on the roof. _

Jon is the first to break the silence, using his very best ‘I’m - a - professional - please - listen - to - me.’ voice. “Sasha, I believe Jane Prentiss is on top of the car.” She nods once. “Right, Martin, how far away are we now?” 

“About ten minutes, give or take the detour.”

“Thank you, would you be a dear and open a window, please?-” The roof creaks obligingly. “-Preferably now?” Tim’s hand is too slow to catch hers, it darts, quick, under the seat and grabs something red and cylindrical. The window winds down. “Sasha! Wait! Don’t-”

-Tim hears the click-hiss of something as she holds down the nozzle, then a thump, and then there is the thing that once was Jane hits the pavement with a sickly squelch, and Jon quickly rolls the window back up.

“Wow, Sash, what was that?” She wipes the last of the foam off on her skirt. (Not her favorite this time.) “Bug repellant.” 

She tucks the fire extinguisher back underneath the seat and sinks back into the car cushions with a sigh. 

***

The rest of the drive passes without incident, or- without incident is a generous description when being chase by abstract horror-terrors down busy intersections, but everything’s relative, right? The moon is a bright crescent over the construction site, glinting over yellow cranes and rubble. None of which is any of Sasha’s concern, she scans the land for the one thing that matters, the industrial cement truck, rented, filled, and ready to rock and roll. 

_ Well, here went nothing. _

The thing-that-is-not-Jon, this… stranger, is quiet for the first time in hours. No longer humming the same fractions of song. Martin prods it as one would prod a particularly stubborn bit of mold on shower tile. “No more clever remarks, then? Not going to tell us how tasty our childhoods are, or- or how much you  _ think _ we hate Jon?” the thing shakes its head, once, twice. “No.” it sounds almost resigned. “I know how to go quietly.” Martin’s face falls, then hardens. “No, no, you don’t just get to  _ pretend _ like there’s no reason for any of us to be angry, not after you steal our friend, someone we lo- -care about a great deal, and then try to get us to feel sorry for you, it’s not fair.” through the blanket, Tim can almost see the twist of a sneer. “And what would you have me do, little fly, little spider? Try to hurt you? No, I know that I would be unmade, if not by your Archivist, then by the Spiral, I have a chance, this way, encased as before. You can take away the physical hurt of me, but you cannot take my words, those who serve the Eye should know how painful the truth of themselves can be.” its arms twist, taffy-like, into something approximating a challenge. “Everything you blamed me for you brought upon yourself. I have never given you reason to be angry with me, and I think that hurts you most of all.”

***

The wooden box in the ground fills slowly, the cement sludge at the bottom spreading across the bottom in a way that, bizarrely, reminds Sasha of marmite. She beckons the Stranger out of the car, leads it to the man-made crater with barely contained disgust. It turns to her, whispers something in her ear, and her face changes to one of sadness, but one where fear isn’t a factor. The thing turns and elegantly swan-dives into the pool of cement. A few moments later a figure lumbers into the lot, it is slumped, and wearing a red dress, and a billion squirming things falling in its wake. By then, all of the archives employees are safely in a car, behind a wall, out of the blast zone, as Sasha put it. And in Sasha’s voice now, the Stranger starts to sing.

***

It goes according to plan, the lure of an Archivist’s voice proved too much for the being that once was Jane Prentiss. Between the pit, and the cement, Well- it was a worm on a hook, so to speak. It was a good twenty minutes before the screaming stopped. And another thirty before the cement set. Sasha was neatly tucked away with a cup of tea in her flat, and the Archivist placed a stick of dynamite neatly on top of the block. When she was a safe distance away, she detonated it. The resulting viscera settled in so much dust that lightly coated her hair, she tried hard not to shudder, and then regretted it. if what that thing said to her was right, if she really was becoming as monstrous as it was, she was going to have to fight very hard to retain these feelings. 

Her humanity.

For those she loved, she would see the grim work done. But never anything more, she wouldn’t, she refused to. She stands there, for a moment, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger for  _ something. _ It’s just for food, she tells herself. It isn’t.

She slips back inside the car, in the front seat, Martin and Jon’s hands are tangled together over the cupholder, something warm and new, born from something terrible. Before her hands reach the seatbelt, Sasha feels the sudden weight of Tim’s arms around her. After a brief stiffening, she allows herself to melt into the hug. She must look particularly pathetic, because he waits for her to pull away. “What was that for?” As she clicks her seatbelt, he looks at her with a shadow of his signature grin. “Seemed like you needed some comfort, that’s all.”


End file.
